Smart people discuss the fine line between reality and virtuality at State of Play II

For anyone interested in the potential crossover of virtual to real life through play in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, the second State of Play conference, held in partnership between New York Law School and Yale Law School, is being fastidiously covered by the extremely capable virtual world researchers at Terra Nova.

According to the conference blurb, some of the questions asked of the forward-thinkers in this field are: * What should be the relationship between real and virtual world economies? * Should legislatures protect virtual world property? * What are the possibilities for using virtual spaces to practice the activities of real world democracy? * Should virtual worlds be treated as separate jurisdictions with their own evolving norms and forms of dispute resolution? * What is the potential for using virtual worlds to promote democracy and self-governance?

While that description may seem esoteric for the non-lawyer lay-person, in effect what this conference is asking is how close to reality are virtual worlds getting.

Already there have been some pretty unbelievable things happening in the ether that shake the presumed foundations that reality stands on. For example, what is the real-world value of money if a fictional castle, made up of binary code, can be purchased for $700? How does the transaction of almost $6 million since the end of July 2004 over online auction sites compare with the annual earnings of an offline industry, like tennis shoes (it's comparable, according to economist Edward Castronova). What if I told you that the average person playing a game like EverQuest made more per hour than the average worker in Bulgaria?

If that's not enough to shake the ground you're sitting on, what happens when a virtual mafia nicks all of a player's virtual gold, that he (or she) has slaved to get for up to 40 hours per week for three years of game playing time? In one case in China, a long-time player received over $1,000 in damages from the games company.

And finally, what about those entrepreneurs who claim to make millions of real dollars per year buying and selling in-game stuff over auction sites? If you don't believe it, a great real-world example can be read in Julian Dibbell's online journal of his year as a virtual goods salesman. While he didn't quite reach the dizzying multi-millionaire heights, it's been calculated that he earned more than the average high school teacher for his time.

Some lawyers and policy makers believe that virtual worlds are potential environments in which to test out financial and political models before throwing them out into the real world. What does that say about the self-perpetuated, in-game governance that people take on themselves in virtual reality? What if someone wants to give up this world for that one?

It's these topics that are under scrutiny at State of Play II. Bet you never realised playing games had such an impact on the real world.

For more on this fascinating topic, read James Meek's superb Guardian article on the subject from last August. An overview of Julian Dibbell's case which I wrote for The Guardian last April can be read here.